The Dragon of 23rd Street
by Led Feynman M.D. D.D.S. Ph.D
Summary: Ian gets caught up in some inter-dimensional kidnapping. The story of a failed social experiment and the former princess of the Fire Nation. Language and themes, but no sex.


For the majority of my life people had been telling me that things never went the way they planned. Things changed and dreams were born and died in time. I'd always taken it with an internal "sure, whatever" and moved on. But they were right.

Unfortunately that particular realization wasn't on the top of my mind that night. Rather I was quite focused on falling asleep so I could wake up in time to sit around and do nothing tomorrow.

In the pit of my gut I knew that the next few months were really going to suck. For most of my peers this was just another summer break, then college in the fall. Not for me! For some reason I decided to do the extra two years, despite the fact that every second spent in that dreaded building _literally sucked the life out of my body._

The clock on my phone read 1:30. So the last hour had simply melted by. Damn these sleepless nights.

Wait, that meant that graduation was yesterday. Which meant that today was my first day as an adult. _My first day as an adult is going to be really shitty if I don't get to sleep_, I pondered. _I wonder if I still have some of those pills..._

Then my phone started talking.

"Ian?" A voice from the phone said. I reached out and flipped it open. It wasn't on the calling screen, but the voice was definitely from my phone. "Hello? Is this Ian?"

"Y-yes?" I whispered. My family was asleep. "Who is this?"

"You can just call me Voice. This is Ian right?" The voice was female, probably American.

"Yes this is Ian. Who the hell is this?" Damn my family. My phone was talking to me, this was important.

"Let me just-" The phone made a brief whine and it fell from my hand and I fell asleep.

* * *

The floor was vibrating wildly at first, but it gradually softened until it stopped. I swung my eyes open and sucked in a breath.

"_What- the fuck- kuuuuuh-_"

I appeared to be contained in a small white room. The illumination source seemed to be the ceiling itself, and there was a low but loud hum coming from somewhere that was seriously beginning to screw with me. Aside from that the room was featureless and boring. I sat upright for a second, glancing around.

"Did I die?"

The room _click_ed and the voice came came back. "Sorry about the knockout, but it's just easier to transport someone when they're unconscious."

"I'm not dead am I?"

"No, you're not. You're in a transport chamber. "

"Where am I transporting to exactly?"

"Glad you asked." There was a series of quiet beeps. "You are the first ever human being to travel through a Brane Junction Field. Assuming you survive, you'll be the first to do that too."

"_What?_"

"That was a joke. We've tested the Field Effect Generator thoroughly on animals. It's perfectly safe." More beeps.

"Yeah, okay, I have a few questions, do you mind?" I stood up.

"Go ahead."

"Okay," I started, clearing my throat and holding up a fist. "Who are you, where am I, what's a Brane Junction Field, what's a Field Effect Generator, who do you represent, why are you doing this to me, and perhaps the biggest question of them all, _why am I dressed?_"

Voice was silent for a second. "Uh, yeah. Okay. Like I said earlier, you can call me Voice. My real name is impossible for the human larynx to vocalize. You are in a transport chamber propagated by the Field Effect Generator, so as to prevent you from becoming vaporized by the harsh conditions outside. A Brane Junction is where two so-called 'alternate universes' contact each other. The field is a localized region where travel between these two universes in permitted. A Field Effect Generator is a function we use to transport you between these two universes. I represent a private corporation whose name is also impossible to pronounce. This is just R&D now, we have no plans for any of this technology yet. You were chosen at random out of six point seven four _billion _people to participate in this experiment. It's like you won the lottery!" She ended on an enthusiastic tone, like she'd been fed a line and rehearsed it many times over.

Both of us were silent for a second. I waited patiently for her to finish answering my question. She didn't continue.

"And?"

"Oh, uh, we decided it would be easier for you to deal with this if you were dressed."

I nodded slightly, allowing what she'd said to soak in. My brain was itching to explode. After a solid forty seconds of silence, I opened my mouth a little bit. "So, are you American or what?"

"Hah, no. A little more distant than America."

"Well you sound American."

"Ahem. Well we, uh, just studied the most common dialect of your language and assumed we had probability on our side."

"Huh."

More beeps. "Oh great, you're about six more minutes away from your target."

I nodded, then looked up quickly. "Hold on, where is my target? Just an alternate universe?"

"Yeah. Artificial of course. We simply want to test the technology required to move things between universes, we've been making artificial universes for, uh-" She stopped talking. "This doesn't translate well. Thousands of _ferilnae_? That doesn't mean anything to you."

"Thousands of what?" Then I kicked myself. "Did you just say artificial universes?"

"A ferilnae is a- oh, yeah. Artificial universe. Not quite the simplest thing to build, but neither is a jumbo jet and you've got how many of those?"

"I haven't got any jumbo jets. How the hell do you build an artificial universe?"

"Well, it's not quite artificial. It's fully real, as real as your universe or mine. We call it artificial because it's not just randomly formed; we design the output we'd like the universe to look like and test billions upon billions of initial conditions with our computers until we find one that closely matches the output. Then we carry those starting conditions to our AUG to create. Until now all we can do is look at and interact with these universes, but we hope to be able to move stuff between them soon. That's what you're testing."

I had to stand still for a moment to collect myself. "Billions upon billions of simulations?" Carl Sagan would be proud.

"Yes. This particular universe took 85,962,427,305 simulations before it arrived at one we liked. There are minor differences, but overall it's more or less the same."

"Wow. Wait, more or less the same as what?"

"Oh, right. We based this universe off a popular television show. From America. A cartoon, to be precise, but it won't be a cartoon for you."

The realization hit me. "Mother of God, this is a fanfiction? Holy shit, I'm in a fanfiction aren't I?! A self-insertion too, I'll bet. I'm probably being written by some asshole, sitting at his desk, wearing boxer shorts and a Batman shirt, listening to Muse, at ten o'clock at night, on the computer his mother bought him for graduation, using an open-source word processor because he didn't want to pirate Microsoft Word." I grabbed my hair and hissed.

"Are you done?"

"Although if this is a self-insertion, this guy must have a disappointing life," I mused. "People want their self-insertion selves to have a better life than theirs. If this is the best my author can come up with, he must be a sad motherfucker."

"Right. Another few minutes."

I smoothed my shirt and regained myself.

Okay. I'm in a transport chamber, hurtling between two universes, one of which is my own universe and the other is an artificial universe based on an American cartoon show. I'm wearing clothes picked out at random, which include my new Rise Against t-shirt, a pair of trousers, and my favorite black Converse shoes. Well at the very least they made me look good.

Hey, hold on. "Hey, hold on. You didn't even ask me if I wanted to do this!"

"Hm?"

"There are rules about human test subjects. You have to ask our permission to test us, and we have to be able to opt out whenever. I wasn't asked if I would do this."

A moment of silence. "...I don't see how that changes anything."

"Well you're violating my rights as a human being!"

"Whoa, I'm sorry! What are you going to do, call the police on us? We're about four dimensions out of their jurisdictions."

"Um-"

"And besides, this isn't going to be dangerous. Just a few months to test the effects of BJF transport, then off you go."

"_A few months_?"

"We have to make sure it doesn't turn the atoms in your body into antimatter or something. It'll just be a few months, and I'll put you right back in your bed. No one will even notice you're gone."

"_Antimatter_?"

"Again, highly unlikely."

"They'll notice when I've aged six months in my sleep!"

"We can reverse that. Ian, I can assure you that everything has been taken care of for you. All you have to do is survive the next eight to fifteen months, which won't even be a problem. So pick up your things, lift your chin up, walk out that door, and make the world your bitch. Can you do that Ian? For us? For yourself?"

As she spoke the words, two objects materialized behind me: a suitcase and a guitar bag. Then a door appeared on the opposite wall, almost melting out of the material like the fucking Terminator.

"You packed for me?"

"A week's worth of clothes and your guitar. Also some other stuff. Didn't want you getting bored."

"Oh... Okay."

A lot of things were happening to me at once here. In addition to the dissipating panic attack from a few seconds ago, I also struggled to find a reason to want to stay.

Family? Not quite. Most of them I wasn't on speaking terms with anymore.

Friends? Since about a month ago they all hated me.

Job? Ha ha, no.

In reality I simply couldn't even find a reason to want to stay. And if Voice wasn't lying, It didn't even really matter; I'd just be sent back to my current time.

I stared at the door for about a minute. Then another minute. Voice didn't say anything to me.

"Okay, fine."

"You'll do it?"

"_Yes _I'll do it. But only because I think it's cool to be the first human to do this."

"Whatever your reasons. Are you ready?"

"Yeah, let's go." I picked the bags up with one hand and crossed to the door.

"Good luck Ian."

"M'leh," I mouthed, opening the door.


End file.
